Racial Discrimination in Home Ownership: Impact of the 2008 Economic Crisis

This paper uses regression analysis on a national data set from the United States from 2001-2016 to analyze racial or ethnic group disparities in home ownership between whites and blacks, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, other Hispanics and American Indians. I employ Integrated Public Use Microdata combined with Bureau of Labor Statistics data and Federal Reserve Economic Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Controlling for demographic, educational, income and wealth, employment and housing characteristics, I find no significant differences between whites and Asian and Pacific Islanders, Mexicans and American Indians. However, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Hispanics face racial disadvantages in regard to home ownership. All minority racial or ethnic groups, except American Indians, lost home ownership parity to whites from 2007-2011, the years primarily affected by the economic crisis